The Japanese government is assigning every citizen a mandatory, permanent 11-digit number. The move has provoked rare civil-disobedience activity from privacy-sensitive citizens, who point out that in three years of work on the system, the Japanese government has failed to create a single privacy policy in respect of the disposition of records that are linked to the number. 86 percent of respondents to a newspaper poll are concerned about the privacy implications of the new system.
Today, protesters compared the residential registry to a 10-digit computerized identification system for cows, which was adopted last fall in an effort to contain mad cow disease. "Cows are 10-digit numbers and human beings are 11 digits," read one protest banner outside the Public Management Ministry, the agency responsible for creating the network.
Inside, the minister, Toranosuke Katayama, met reporters and appealed for "more dialogue" with opponents. His spokesman, Yoshiuki Baba, stressed that even without a new privacy law, people convicted of leaking personal information face up to two years in prison and a fine of $8,300…
"Right now, the government is saying that the card will be used for 93 types of administrative matters," he said, referring to such steps as obtaining pensions and passports. "But in the future, the government has a bigger project, named "E-Government" which will have 16,000 administrative usages."
(via Werblog)